We, as boxing fans, know that referees have a hard task, we forgive them for making an occasional mistake, we know they aren't perfect. Despite this we aren't willing to put up with what appears to be complete incompetence such as that shown recently when Austrian referee Ernst Salzgeber was the 3rd man in the ring as Richard Towers and Gregory Tony traded blows.

Salzgeber is genuinely a very experienced official who has refereed well over 150 bouts since 2004 including a number of international title bouts. Instead of using his years of experience he seemed to completely forget what he was in the ring to do and allowed British Heavyweight Richard Towers to take a sustained beating before breaking the action on a number of occasions. As you can see in the video below, this fight should have been stopped on at least 2 occasions in this one round alone.

Whilst Towers would eventually recover and win the bout (after Tony retired with a damaged hand) he shouldn't have the W on his record. The mistakes made by Ernst Salzgeber in this round alone cost Tony the win and cost the fans in attendance the correct result. I'm afraid to say that this sort of incompetence shouldn't be allowed in the ring, in fact if I was a fighter I'd be very afraid of Salzgeber either robbing me of a victory (as he did to Tony) or allowing me (or my opponent) to be seriously hurt. This is a dangerous enough sport, we don't need referees forgetting that part of their job is to "protect the fighters".